Supreme Court Receives Trump 2024 Ballot Ban Appeal
President Donald Trump just appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to keep his name on the Colorado ballot in 2024. As we told you, the Justices were likely waiting for the President’s appeal before issuing an order about the 14th Amendment ballot access case.
Fox News reports on the appeal that President Trump’s legal team filed yesterday:
In Wednesday’s filing, Trump’s lawyers urged the high court to reverse the Colorado Supreme Court ruling and “return the right to vote for their candidate of choice to the voters.”
The case is being appealed based on several arguments, including whether the president is among those officials subject to disqualification by Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, the so-called insurrection clause; and whether Section 3 is “self-executing,” meaning that it allows states to remove candidates from a ballot in the absence of any congressional action.
Trump’s lawyers have said individual states don’t have the authority to enforce Section 3 and would cause confusion for voters.
We are representing the Colorado GOP in our pending appeal at the U.S. Supreme Court. Yesterday we filed our reply brief at the Supreme Court. Now our appeal and the President’s appeal can be packaged together for the Justices.
We hope the Justices decide to hear the case and issue an order tomorrow taking up the case. This is the most important case on election law ever. And because of the upcoming primaries in January, the case is moving rapidly.
The 14th Amendment Supreme Court case is very complicated because it’s a case of first impression – no clear precedent has been set in U.S. legal history on which to base a decision.
ACLJ Senior Counsel Andy Ekonomou suggests that the easiest path forward for the Justices is to decide if President Trump is an officer as defined by Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. Then they must decide if individual states are constitutionally allowed to decide who is qualified to be on election ballots.
As ACLJ Senior Counsel and Director of Policy Harry Hutchison has explained, Section 3 of the 14th Amendment was put in place after the Civil War to disqualify Confederate officers from being elected to local office due to their history as insurrectionists (those who took up arms and waged war on the United States).
First, the President is the Executive Branch – he is not an officer of the United States. Instead, he oversees the appointment of officers, meaning the 14th Amendment doesn’t apply.
Let’s also return to defining an insurrection. What happened on January 6 was clearly a political protest that turned violent. Yet prosecutors then spent two years investigating and preparing the cases against not only President Trump but also the hundreds of others charged for their actions on January 6. Not a single prosecutor referenced the federal statute for insurrection.
Finally, I want to remind everyone that the First Amendment rights of the Colorado GOP have been violated. State parties have the constitutional right to nominate the frontrunner of their Republican primary. To deny that right is to violate the Constitution.
Today’s Sekulow broadcast provided a full analysis of President Trump’s appeal at the U.S. Supreme Court and the unconstitutionality of the far Left’s attempt to deny the rights of Americans to vote for the candidate of their choice. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and ACLJ Senior Counsel for International and Government Affairs Jeff Ballabon both joined the broadcast to discuss foreign policy in the Middle East.
Watch the full broadcast below: